You may have heard of Open Source alternatives to Adobe Flash and thought 'maybe I should try this'. Believe me - you should. FlashDevelop is the best Open Source editor I've seen. It really has it all - it's developed by the Flash community, it's fast, it's free and it will even make you a better coder.

Formerly there was no alternative to using Flash. The built in actionscript editor in the Flash IDE leaves much to be desired, but there are many alternatives ranging from the free SEPY and SCITE to commercial tools such as PrimalScript. Some of these can also use the Open Source compiler MTASC to create SWF files directly from the editor. FAME(S) is a popular collection of tools that work together to create a complete alternative to the Flash IDE.

Open Source wins ground in every camp these days. Adobe has chosen the Open Source editor Eclipse as the IDE for Flex 2. The Flex 2 IDE is actually Eclipse plus several extensions to it such as the new compiler, custom panels, code hints and more. There are many other extensions for Eclipse that will ease your Flash development ranging from the commercial FDT to several Open Source alternatives.